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December 05, 2007

How do you spell Gary Danko?

This multi-starred restaurant in San Francisco, where we have eaten six times and really liked the fare on most visits, has firmly moved into a zone, which can only be described as rigid and not fun.

Point in question: four of us from Napa Valley made the trek last week to Gary Danko, usually ranked Number One on restaurant dining lists in San Francisco. Maybe the departure of long-time sommelier Jason Alexander (his real name!) had something to do with our treatment, but surely, the knowledgeable and professional Maitre d’ had the authority to resolve our issue but chose not to.

Background: Being part of a winemaking team in Napa Valley, and having spent 30 years writing about food and wine and professionally reviewing restaurants, I often bring my own wines to dinner.

I have no objection to pay a corkage fee and when restaurants are extremely gracious and don’t charge corkage, I ALWAYS include what would have been the cost of the opened wines, which I brought, when calculating the tip, because why should the waitstaff get short-changed when management is gracious enough to waive the corkage fee? In this fashion, there are many meals in Napa Valley where the tip we leave equals the price of the food on our bill! We are, if anything, generous to a fault with waiters; for the record, we are not cheap, we are not whiners, we are not bumpkins.

And so, we took three bottles of wine to Gary Danko, where our foursome intended to spend the bulk of a Saturday night. Our reservation was for 9.30 pm.

I was told at the door that the corkage policy is that you may ONLY bring two bottles to dinner and that Restaurant Gary Danko charges $35 per bottle opened. I agreed to the terms and pointed out that the third bottle was simply a back-up – in case one of our primary wines was flawed, or corked, which happens these days with too much frequency.

Oh oh... the fun is about to end...

For starters, we ordered three glasses of Billecart-Salmon Rose Champagne at $32 a glass; we ordered one martini at $15. We ordered three bottles of sparkling water at $7.75 each. We ordered a delicious 2004 Vincent Girardin Puligny-Montrachet for $112. We asked the sommelier to open our two wines: a 2004 Leroy Vosne-Romanee and a 1997 Guigal La Landonne Cote-Rotie, which is considered by serious wine lovers to be one of the great wines of the world (maybe not the 97 vintage, but in general, this 100 percent Syrah Cote-Rotie is one of the wines you would choose to take to a desert island).

I have cellared the 1997 Landonne for some time, but contemporarily, if you wanted to replace it, you would have to pay $400 for the bottle. Even so, when we opened the wine, it was not a charming example; I have had this wine many times, even been to the cellar in Ampuis, France, and tasted different vintages of Marcel Guigal’s single vineyard Cote-Roties from cask with him. In short: while this was a modestly flawed bottle, I did not feel the wine would complement the delicious fare at Gary Danko. If anything, it was a comment about the quality of the food and the wine not being able to keep up with it.

So I called over the server and asked him if he would please open our third bottle, to replace the undrinkable Cote-Rotie, which we were not going to drink. Note: I was not asking for a bottle to be opened as a third beverage – I was asking for a replacement to be opened to take the place of the flawed Landonne.

I was told that this was an unusual request – we’d already reached our limit of two BYO bottles; I said that I understood, but that we wanted to open the third bottle (a 1991 Philip Togni Cabernet from Spring Mountain) to replace the less than perfect 1997 Landonne.

Ultimately, we were told that "Restaurant Gary Danko" (they always talk about themselves in the third person, which increases the drama and makes employees feel – and, I presume act – more important) would permit us to have a third bottle opened – but just this one time – (they underlined this part with great inflection in their voice) and then informed us that we would be charged an additional $70 corkage to open this third bottle!

How can you have "Highway Robbery" when you're not in a car?

I queried the charge, citing the fact that they were simply replacing an already opened bottle… and even if they felt compelled to recharge me for opening another bottle, why were they PUNISHING ME for the poorly made wine that I’d brought? I hadn’t walked in with a bottle of Two-Buck-Chuck, I wasn’t a novice at this game; I have, in fact, eaten at many three-star French restaurants to review their fare and not a one of them has ever attempted to make me, or other patrons, squirm in their plush seats by PUNISHING guests with an aggressive, unreasonable, elevated corkage fee.

In the end, our bill for the evening came to $848.47 for four people. And, for the first time that I can ever recall in 30 years of eating at, or reviewing, restaurants, I was compelled to leave NO TIP.

Rather than generously over-tip the mostly brilliant waitstaff here, I felt I had to make a statement – to “Restaurant Gary Danko” and the Matire d’ who insisted we be charged the extra fee – that they are part of the hospitality industry, not the in-hospitality industry, and that until “Restaurant Gary Danko” understands this, I refuse to contribute to the corruption of the morals of its staff for instituting and maintaining an offensive, and impudent, corkage policy.

Imagine; had the waiter, or maitre d’, simply agreed to open our replacement bottle and not made a fuss about it, we would have come away from our dinner feeling like kings. We would have told our friends to visit the restaurant; we would have planned to return ourselves. We would have graciously left a large tip. We would have returned many times in the future to spend thousands of dollars.

But from a point of shortsightedness, and the stupidity of charging an unwarranted step-up fee to open a third bottle -- replacing a flawed bottle for which we’d already been charged corkage – we will not go back to Restaurant Gary Danko.

There are many fine top-tier restaurants, and many sensational neighborhood restaurants, in San Francisco, which want our business, which go out of their way to get it and keep it.

There is no place in my life for a restaurant that heaps haughty, effete, belittling or arrogant behavior upon any of its patrons, me included; because, sometimes, the customer just actually happens to be right.

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Comments

Steve:

Much thanks for your feedback and commentary. Imagine -- it's been a year since I posted my original story and they're still getting away with all that fussy, make-you-squirm, overbearing behavior.
Not what you'd expect -- or tolerate -- in a "top-tier" restaurant. And obviously not a scene that you, or I, will willingly return to experience.
When the economy falters a bit more, and San Francisco tables lighten at the expensive restaurants... and staff are let go, then maybe a little bit of hubris will creep into the kitchen.

My partner went to GD for a reward dinner for some accomplishments at work. One of their party was running late, but the rest of them had arrived early. They tried to explain the situation to the Maitre'D and told him they understood the restaurant's scheduling problem and the person running late would understand if they had to eat without him if he was more than 10 minutes late. The Maitre'D said that was impossible, that they could not seat a table of 3 (!!). My partner had tried to order an expensive bottle of champagne and caviar service in the midst of all this to signal to the restaurant that they weren't going to be a "cheap" party, but the Maitre'D had such a stick up his ass he wouldn't allow them to order anything at the bar.

Long story short, the 4th person arrived in the nick of time, and as they were seated they were told they had to complete their meal within 2 hours of the original 7 PM reservation. Utterly unacceptable at a restaurant that offers a tasting menu.

A few minutes into the meal, when they had ordered wine, the entire tenor of the service changed from rude to obsequious, and the pace slowed down to the point where they were the last party in the restaurant that night, and the sommelier pressed his special two-tone business card in my partner's hand, telling him if there was anything he could arrange in the future, please call the special number directly, not the regular reservation line.

I have a saying for this. When ego outruns Intelligence the result is stupidity! I have seen this over and over success has grown their ego until their decision making is blinded by that ego This obviously is true for Gary Danko's.
They have gone as far as they will and now they will lose business by the stupidity of their out of control ego or Head Man!
In one word that is just stupid, I agree they are looking to lose business if this is their idea of hospitality, just poor...as you pointed out does not even make sense!

I am not sure that most restaurant patrons would agree with your point of view that waiters have a divine right to a tip regardless of the degree of their service, quality of the dining experience etc. I grew up with the teachings that good service demands a good tip but that lousy, testy, uncaring service does not.

I have often said that a really skilled waiter can save the dining experience for a guest when the food is poor, and that a poor waiter out front can ruin good fare, no matter how talented the chef in the kitchen. Waitstaffing is an important career that requires great “people skills” and as I said in my story, I have never NOT left a generous tip until my experience at Restaurant Gary Danko.

And let’s be clear – I asked the gentleman responsible for his waiters if he would be fair and not punish me for asking his staff to open a third bottle, given one bottle I brought was undrinkable; the decision of how his waitstaff would deal with the situation was determined by him, not me. If his waiters have a grumble about not getting a tip from me, they should direct their ire at the GM or Maitre d’, not at me.

And let me be clear about this flawed wine, which we did not drink; had I bought this wine off the very large and well thought out wine list, and had the wine been corked, at whatever price, it would have been taken back by the restaurant and another, similar bottle pulled from the cellar. No questions asked, no punishing fee to me for having asked the restaurant to open a bottle that happened to be corked. So why, if the bottle I brought, is corked, should I be punished with not only another corkage fee, but a DOUBLED corkage fee? That, Boywillis, is NOT a hospitable policy. It is an inhospitable policy.

I also think some of the emails, which came directly to me (and not through this website) are worth sharing for their point of view and for their humor; I am not a lone voice out there ranting about my Danko dining experience.

1. From a reader in Los Angeles:
Your review of Danko was great but I think you are missing the point. In LA, people pay far more than $70 to be treated rudely and with disrespect by a big name restaurant. The food is usually mediocre just to make sure you get the point. In fact, they wear it like a badge of honor and brag about it at Hollywood parties as a way of being accepted. Your problem is that you don't go to those parties so maybe the thing to do is spend more time in LA so you can feel good about being made to feel lousy. If you still insist on being treated with respect and dignity, then you will just have to stay in Napa Valley for dinner, or stick to places in San Francisco that value your values. However, Danko will find this expectation most arrogant of you.

2. From a reader in Oregon:
I had a seriously good chuckle and a "good for you" moment when I read your article about Restaurant Gary Danko. I cannot believe how unreasonable they were to you and your situation but glad you wrote the article. Wonder what prompts people to be that rude in a world that has so many other serious concerns to deal with - oh say like war. They need a reality check. But good for you for sticking to your guns.

3. From a reader in the south Bay-area of San Francisco:
Danko has never been on my list of favorite places. I think I went twice early on and have never been back despite being acquainted with some of the sommeliers at various times.
I did not have a bad time on either visit but rather like La Folie, I could not see what the fuss was about. I may be a little unfair, La Folie is clearly a very nice bistro (but that is all) and Danko does have elements that raise it above that status but they are mostly pretensions in my view. I am not alone in my thinking that these two are the most over-rated restaurants in The City, a number of my friends and acquaintances have come to the same opinion independently over the years. I'm not saying they are bad, just over-rated. I still go to La Folie on occasion because of the atmosphere, the good service and the charisma of the chef but Danko has none of this to offer. As your experience confirms, it is precisely the opposite. I believe everyone at Danko is either consciously or unconsciously aware that there is an element of sham about the place. I think the arrogance you describe is probably a manifestation of a guilty conscience.

4. From a reader in San Francisco with an evident sense of humor:
How much coffee did you drink that day?

As I understand it, an appropriate gratuity should always be left regardless of the issue (service, quality, experience, etc.) as the wait staff should not be punished for decisions and policies established by the restaurant (especially in this case). If you feel that you have a valid complaint regarding any of the above stated items, it should be taken up with the restaurant management. To put it bluntly, in your fit of entitlement, you took money out of the pockets of the people that needed it most. Tips are usually shared by a broad spectrum of employees, most of which (namely busboys and bar-backs) can’t afford to pay rent, let alone drop almost a cool grand on dinner. Gary Danko has a house rule of two outside bottles per dinner. You broke that rule and were asked to pay a small fee for your transgression. Nothing more. Nothing less. In the end, it was pittance compared to what comparable wines would have cost off the GD wine list. You are right though, there was an arrogant bastard at dinner that night, it just wasn’t Gary Danko